Play Star Trek Online on Linux

This guide cover(ed) how to play Star Trek Online on Linux; it is based on the personal experience I had when I played it back when it has been released. A bit of warning first: at the time I was using Kubuntu 9.10 64 bits and Wine 1.1.40, so your mileage may vary if you are using more updated version of Wine and (K)Ubuntu or a different distribution.

First thing to do of course is to install the game by launching it’s installer; if Wine registered itself as handler for .exe files you can simply double-click it, otherwise open your console application (Konsole, Terminal, or whatever), enter into the CD directory (something like /mnt/cdrom or /media/cdrom) and execute “wine setup.exe”; the installation itself should not give any problem.

At the end of the installation, you should automatically get the game launcher, but you can (and should) close it as it should not work right away. To make the native game launcher work you need to install MS Internet Explorer (I know, I know, it is a paradox to have to rely on IE even under Linux, but be sure you need it only for the STO Launcher and beside this case, it will be constrained on the Wine folder); to get it you have to download WineTricks and run form the consolewinetricks ie7"

Beside IE7, you need to install both MSXML3 and MSXML4:winetricks msxml3
winetricks msxml4

Done with the installation, open the Wine’s version of Regedit and include the following configurations (beware that, unless you have already created it for other reasons, you have to create the “Direct3D” key):[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareWineDirect3D]
"DirectDrawRenderer"="opengl"
"Multisampling"="enabled"
"OffscreenRenderingMode"="fbo"
"PixelShaderMode"="enabled"
"RenderTargetLockMode"="auto"
"UseGLSL"="enabled"
"VertexShaderMode"="hardware"
"VideoMemorySize"="768"

On the last key (VideoMemorySize) you have to input the amount of RAM of your video card. Now open “winecfg”, go to the “Libraries” tab and add “mmdevapi” (if it is not present on the list, simply write it and click “Add”) and set it to “disabled”.

Now you can launch the Star Trek Online Launcher, log in, patch the game and start it.

Some peculiarities you should be aware of:

The first time you click “Engage”, the game will comply that the video drivers are not updated (even if they are); simply click to load the default settings anyway and you should be fine;

If you have problems moving around (your character don’t keep moving if you keep the movement keys down, but you have to press them several time), it seems to be related to an old bug (I don’t recall if it is due to Wine or Ubuntu itself) related to the “key repetition”. To work around it, simply deactivate the “key repetition” from the (K)Ubuntu control pannel (it should be under the “Keyboard” section) before launching the game; remember to turn it on after you finished playing Star Trek Online otherwise you will end up with the same problem on the desktop.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this guide it is quite outdated since I am not longer playing Star Trek Online therefore you should visit the page of Star Trek Online on Wine AppDB for more updated informations.